A Finnish company began as a pulp mill back in 1865. Three years later it opened its second pulp mill on the banks of the Nokianvirta River; hence the name--NOKIA.
Three decades later, Nokia ventured into electricity generation. Along the way, through mergers and acquisitions, Nokia also got into cable and rubber production.
In 1967, the Nokia Corporation was born with a focus on four markets: paper, electronics, rubber, and cable. It developed things like toilet paper, bicycle and car tires, rubber footwear, TVs, communication cables, robotics, PCs, and military equipment, among others.
In 1979, Nokia entered a joint venture to create a radio telephone company. A few years later it launched the world’s first cellular network, linking together the Scandinavian countries of Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and Finland. Nokia dubbed its first car-phone the Mobira Senator, weighing in a little under 25 pounds.
Around 1987, Nokia launched its first compact, mobile phone--the Mobira Cityman 900--weighing in a little under 2 pounds and carrying a price tag of around $5,456. Despite the price, it sold like hotcakes.
By the 1990s, Nokia decided to focus solely on the telecommunications market and this is when you and I learned about the company (some of you no doubt owned one of the Nokia cellphones pictured above). In 1998, Nokia surpassed Motorola to become the world leader in cellular phone sales.
Unfortunately, however, Nokia was unable to sustain that success because of a number of factors (for example, faulty batteries leading to a giant recall in 2007), but most importantly, because they failed at embracing change—the very thing they had done so well at for close to 150 years!
In an article entitled, “The rise, dominance, and Epic Fall—A Brief Look at Nokia's History” we read that, “The Finnish company’s unwillingness to embrace drastic change when it was required the most was probably the biggest reason that brought the mobile giant down. The company took way too long to embrace the smartphone revolution and when it finally did it made way too many errors in its strategy.”
